Some say that Emperor Cleon was an extremist or fanatic. Others claim that he created the Imperium through a set of conspiracies and labyrinthine arrangements of evil and manipulative schemes.

What is indisputable in the eyes of most Imperial historians is that it produced peace, civilization, and prosperity for over a thousand years leading to the Third Imperium. Of course, some question whether the many wars and violent conflicts really constitute a true peace. However, subjectively speaking, the majority of Imperial Space experienced relative calm and a great increase in prosperity.

Cleon, following the custom of the nobility in the Federation, took a grand tour of the federation starting in -34. He spent a year studying at the AAB on Vland, returning to Sylea via a circuitous route through Amdukan and Antares. He returned to Sylea in -30 only a month before his father died.

In -30 Cleon ascended to the title of Grand Duke of the Sylean Federation and acquired controlling interest in Zhunastu Industries, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in the Federation.

With the combined political force of his title and the economic force of the conglomerate behind him, Cleon set about the mammoth task of reforming the Sylean Federation. Cleon's vision for the reformation was to disband the centralized government. Cleon believed that the only way to expand the Sylean federation was to institute a decentralized government, reforming the Sylean nobility to oversee the government's interest in the distant areas of the expanding federation.

According to Sylean history, Francis Repzinski, one of the last claimants to the throne of the Second Imperium established the capital on Sylea. Cleon, and the Grand Senate, used this connection to establish the legitimate claim of the Sylean Federation as the heir to the First and Second Imperiums. In the Sylean year 651, the Grand senate crowned Cleon as Emperor of the newly-established Third Imperium. One of Cleon's first acts was to declare the current year to be Year 0 of a new Imperial Age.

One factor in the success of Cleon's campaign to establish a new Imperium was the existence of a rump state of the old Vilani Imperium that was centered around Vland. The region in and around Vland Sector had remained a beacon of stability and political cooperation throughout the surrounding chaos of the Long Night. Cleon negotiated an agreement that allowed for these Vilani to recognize and become a part of the nascent Third Imperium, in return for a broad array of security and cultural guarantees.